If there’s one thing I can say about last night’s Academy Awards, it’s that everything ran super smoothly and there were no issues at all.
Actually…hang on…I just got handed an updated envelope here and it says that last night’s Oscars featured the biggest fuck-up in the 89-year history of the awards. My bad guys, my bad. If there’s one silver lining to this whole thing it’s that my dismal record for predicting the winners is overshadowed slightly. I mean, sure, I got like half of the categories wrong, but at least I didn’t announce the wrong Best Picture winner on national TV!
Right, Warren?
Anyway, as usual, I will touch on my thoughts on the program as a whole at the bottom. First, we have to get through all the categories that I got wrong this year. There are a lot of them….
Makeup and Hairstyling
My prediction: Star Trek Beyond
Actual winner: Suicide Squad
This was only the second award given out last night and I already knew something had gone horribly, horribly wrong. Look, I think some of the makeup work in Suicide Squad was pretty good. Killer Croc for example, looks phenomenal. But also there’s Jared Leto’s Joker. Look at this stupid moron.
THIS WON AN OSCAR.
So now, for the rest of eternity, we have to say…Academy Award Winner Suicide Squad. I just threw up in my mouth a little bit.
Costume Design
My prediction: Jackie
Actual winner: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them
The problem here was in my stupid miscalculation. I forgot that the only thing the Academy loves more than period pieces in costume design is fantasy movies. Fantastic Beasts is both! A magical fantasy film that takes place in the 20s. It was unstoppable! How did I not see this coming?
Sound Editing
My prediction: Hacksaw Ridge
Actual winner: Arrival
In retrospect, this was way more of a toss up than I originally considered. War movies and sci fi always win this category. I listed Arrival as my “What should win” pick, so I’m really happy it did. Spoiler: this would end up being the only award Arrival picked up. Still one more than I predicted, though.
Sound Mixing
My prediction: La La Land
Actual winner: Hacksaw Ridge
Um…I don’t really know what to say here. I’m still confused as to how you could think a musical is one of the best films of the year, but not say it has the best mixing. Hacksaw Ridge sounded good, I guess? The explosions were loud but not too loud? I dunno, guys. The Oscars are weird. This was the first indication that things for La La Land were not going to go as well as everyone (myself included) predicted.
Short Film – Live Action
My prediction: Ennemis Interieurs
Actual winner: Sing
For two years in a row, I thought the super serious, culturally relevant short with the depressing ending would snag the Oscar. And for two years the cute, feel-good story with a happy ending ended up winning. I’m not complaining. I’m just saying I’m really bad at this.
Best Editing:
My prediction: La La Land
Actual winner: Hacksaw Ridge
I legitimately have no idea? I caught Hacksaw Ridge right before the Oscars on Sunday and I didn’t find anything particularly great about the editing. Certainly nothing better than the other four nominees in the category. Maybe this was a way of secretly awarding Mel Gibson without actually awarding Mel Gibson? I dunno.
Original Screenplay
My prediction: La La Land
Actual winner: Manchester by the Sea
Hard to complain here. Manchester was absolutely the best-written film of those nominated, and I was thrilled to see it win. This was the point when I started really believing La La Land’s Best Picture win was in jeopardy.
Actor in a Leading Role
My prediction: Denzel Washington – Fences
Actual winner: Casey Affleck – Manchester by the Sea
This one kind of hurt. It hurt me because it so visibly hurt Denzel, who you could tell really wanted to win this one. It’s hard to say Casey Affleck didn’t earn the award either, though. Manchester by the Sea is a truly wonderful movie and his performance is such a big part of that. But damn…Denzel!
Of course, this is all complicated by Affleck’s allegations of sexual assault. Here, I’ll let Brie Larson, sexual assault survivor advocate who won her Oscar last year by playing a sexual assault victim visualize how most people feel about this:
Best Picture
My prediction: La La Land
Actual winner: La La Land Moonlight
And here we are. So before we discuss this I want to quickly go over “what happened” to the best of my knowledge and understanding. I shall do so in a handy bulleted list:
- The accounting firm in charge of counting votes, auditing the results, and delivering the envelopes (PwC) makes at least two copies of each envelope, in the event that one gets lost, damaged, or thousands of other things that could possibly go wrong.
- Emma Stone won the Best Actress award for her role in La La Land and was given her copy of the winning envelope, which she says she never let go of.
- The duplicate copy of the Best Actress envelope was supposed to be removed from the envelope stack after the award was given out. It wasn’t.
- Someone (PwC?) went to grab the Best Picture envelope and accidentally grabbed the Best Actress duplicate
- Warren Beatty takes the envelope he is given and opens it on stage. Warren looks really confused and at a loss for what to do because the envelope says “Emma Stone – La La Land.” Everyone, including his co-announcer Faye Dunaway, thinks Warren is just doing a funny bit.
- Warren shows the envelope to Faye, who…thinking he’s doing a silly bit, just glances at it and sees the words “La La Land.” Faye announces La La Land as the winners and everyone backstage goes absolutely nuts.
- While off camera but still next to the mic we hear Warren Beatty say to Faye “It says Emma Stone.” Faye replies, “What!?”
- About the same time the La La Land producers get on stage and start making their speeches, the correct envelope has been obtained and Academy technicians are frantically whispering to each La La Land producer that they actually made a mistake.
- This finally gets up to La La Land producer Jordan Horowitz, who now has Beatty standing next to him with the correct envelope. Horowitz, like the classy guy he is, takes the mic and says that there’s been a mistake and Moonlight won the Oscar. He states that he is thrilled to hand the award over to the real winners.
- Beatty holds up the correct envelope and the camera smartly cuts to a close-up shot showing that Moonlight has indeed won Best Picture.
So what does this all mean? Well first and foremost, it’s a really embarrassing fuck-up for everyone involved. This has never happened in the 89-year history of the Oscars and you can bet the Academy will do everything in its power to make sure it never happens again. More importantly, though, this moment highlighted the friendliness between people in this industry. When it comes to awards, people and reporters love narratives. We love to think of these two movies as “doing battle” with each other, including all the animosity that comes with that. What we saw last night was the opposite of that. The producers of La La Land, and Horowitz specifically, while going through what must have been the most intense emotional roller coaster they’ve ever experienced, graciously handed over the award and the microphone. This serves as an important reminder that while we all tune into the Academy Awards to see who wins, what this event is really about is celebrating great art.
The real unfortunate thing about all of this is that it has overshadowed just have momentous this win was for Moonlight. As much as I was in the bag for La La Land, I am over the moon (get it!) for the real winner. Moonlight cost 1.5 million dollars to make. It is a movie with a primarily black cast and a black director that isn’t about racism or slavery. It is a small, incredibly personal story about one gay man’s struggle with himself and the world around him. This movie just won the Best Picture. More importantly, it won over a film taking place in Hollywood that celebrated everything about Hollywood.
In the end, I got 15 of the 24 awards correct for a pretty dismal percentage rate of 63%. So yeah, I got a lot of things wrong, but I’m mostly pretty happy with the results this year. La La Land ended up winning six of its 14 nominations, which was enough to make it the winningest film of the night without having the awards show be super boring. I’ll take it!
So if we exclude the huge fuck-up of an ending, how was the awards show as a whole? Pretty good! As expected we had a fair amount of political talk and some pointed Trump insults from host Jimmy Kimmel, but the politics were surprisingly muted. The ceremony was more focused on why these awards were special than it was an attempt to use it as a platform for political declarations. When there were political declarations, though, they were pointed and incredible. Unsurprisingly, The Salesman won for Best Foreign Film and though the director boycotted the ceremony, he sent a wonderful speech about inclusion and the power of film to create empathy between different peoples.
Jimmy Kimmel was a pretty good host all in all. Some of his jokes fell flat and his quasi-racist “let’s make fun of foreign people’s ‘weird’ names” bit got old quickly. But I found the tour bus bit absolutely fantastic and his recurring feud with Matt Damon produced some of the best laughs of the night. Look, at the end of the day, the Oscars are kind of silly. Suicide Squad somehow won as many awards as Arrival. But every so often, the awards do something right. Last night the Academy made a statement and yes, it was political. They declared proudly that film was art. And as such it maintains all the characteristics of art. It is challenging, it is unapologetic, it is political. Sometimes, it’s gonna piss people off. But it also has an incredible, unique ability to bring people together. By selecting Moonlight as their winner, the Academy has chosen to highlight a film that maintains all these characteristics. It’s easy to look at this ceremony and write it off as a bunch of rich people celebrating themselves because honestly, that’s kind of what it is. But last night reminded us that it’s also a celebration of the art form itself. Moonlight matters. Art matters. And every so often…the Oscars matter too.
Here are a few of my favorite moments:
- Viola Davis’s acceptance speech. She’s absolutely incredible, and this award is long overdo. She’s also the first black woman to win a Tony, Emmy, and Oscar. Still think it should have been for best lead actress, though!
- Every time Kimmel took shots at Mel Gibson. Every. Time.
- Taraji P. Henson’s face every time candy parachuted from the sky.
- “Ben Affleck & Guest” and Matt Damon being played off while presenting.
- Justin Timberlake’s opening performance. I don’t even like the song, but you can’t help but love Timberlake. Was this an audition for hosting duties in the future? I hope so.
- Everything Sunny Pawar.
- 16-year-old Moana star Auli’i Cravalho’s performance of “How Far I’ll Go.” The girl got hit in the head with a giant flag mid-song and didn’t miss a beat. 16 years old!
